


I Have Burned Your Bridges

by th_esaurus



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: F/M, Incest, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 10:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1425703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Booker existed.</p><p>"I can see to that," Elizabeth murmured to herself; and she heard it echo through all the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Burned Your Bridges

She did get used to the killing faster than she'd ever imagined; Booker was right about that. 

It irked her when he was so prescient.

*

Holding him under the water, Elizabeth Comstock – who was also Anna DeWitt, although nobody had ever called her that in this lifetime – felt a wave of catharsis. It felt like the right thing to do, watching the breath bubble up out of his silent, open mouth. He thrashed a little, clutching at her wrist with his big, calloused hands, his grip like shackles.

"No," she soothed, "No, Booker."

She slept by the lakeside that night, belonging nowhere, the hem of her dress wet against her bare ankles. The grass was enough of a pillow, the spring warmth enough of a blanket. She felt emptied of herself, filled up with the possibilities of an infinite universe, and it felt good. That heady catharsis. The missing sound of Booker's heavy breathing by her side.

Elizabeth stayed in that timeline for a few days more. The world itself seemed untouched by the absence of Booker DeWitt. She sold her necklace for a few good coins, and could not remember, as soon as she handed it over, whether it had been the bird or the cage. She bought inauthentic pain au chocolat from a badly accented vendor who liked the blue of her dress, and then sold the dress too, bought simpler wares and had plenty to spare.

She asked an older couple about Wounded Knee, and they told her about noble victories.

Booker spat out a dirty laugh.

Elizabeth turned to chide him; but he was not there. He wasn't there, and never had been.

*

How could she remember a murderer who'd never had a hand to lay on a weapon?

How could she remember the whisky scent of a goodnight kiss from a father who'd never laid her to bed?

*

There were cracks in her catharsis. She had always had a bitter temper, molded from years of loneliness.

She jumped through a few tears. Some took her to new places, and some the same places with unnoticeable changes. That was the way of it. She climbed through a tear in a military graveyard in Arkansas, and came out the other side in front of a plain, crumbling tombstone carved with the name _Booker DeWitt_. He had been in his forties, and had left behind, the stone read, a loving daughter. The patch of weeds above the grave suggested otherwise. 

Elizabeth kicked the ground, digging her heel into the dry earth, as though she could reach the dead man from here. Six feet over.

There were cracks in her catharsis, and then it shattered all at once. A lie, like everything else.

*

Booker existed.

"I can see to that," Elizabeth murmured to herself; and she heard it echo through all the universe.

*

"Lady," he called her. Not _Miss._ It made her feel older, and in so many ways she was.

She could walk easily enough in the heels, because she had done it before. She didn't cough when she smoked, her lungs did not object. All of this was old hat, and she wondered how many times she had already destroyed Booker DeWitt. How many times she had felt unshackled by his presence, only to have those familiar chains sneak back around her wrists and ankles.

She could not ask him to call her _Ms Comstock,_ it might trigger the flood, give the game away. But she couldn't sully herself with the familiarity of his Christian name.

He was a dead man. She didn't befriend corpses. She had made that mistake one too many times.

*

There were, it seemed, a limited number of pre-determined outcomes.

First, foremost, Elizabeth could kill him, most often indirectly. His bad habit, murder. A means to an end, he'd always said. She took a grim satisfaction in the way her nail polish matched the shade of his blood.

Other times, Elizabeth could absolve him, though this was rare. Once or twice she had seen a glimpse of potential in Booker, a genuine love that he aimed neither at the bottle nor the bank. He had said, once, "I got a daughter at home, Anna's her name. Foolish men hope but I guess I'm a fool 'cause I hope she grows into half the young woman you are, Miss Elizabeth."

More than once, she pressed her lips against Booker's.

More than once – and that can be a good many times – she tilted up her bent knee to let him push inside, and breathed hard and fast against his neck. He was not a clean-shaven man through any tear. His bristles stung.

"Elizabeth," he gasped, missing some of her consonants.

He could only ever know the half of her.

*

 _Us DeWitts_ , she thought, as she wrapped her bare legs around his waist and listened to his sharp inhale. _Can't leave well enough alone._

*

She went to Wounded Knee and watched him fight, and slept that night in the open air, clutching her stomach and wetting the sand beneath her eyelashes and mouth.

The next time, she made him kneel and recite his crimes before she had the hired gun shoot him through the temple. She liked the irony of that one. 

* 

"How many times have you killed me?"

"Oh. A few." 

Elizabeth had told him everything. It wouldn't matter. He kissed her anyway, on her soft jaw. He had a strange reverence for her body, and she wondered if it was an indicator of his rebirth. The potential for obsession.

"Have you ever forgiven me instead?"

His nose began to bleed and she rolled off of him, sad and disgusted. She had a flick-knife in her purse. It was really that easy, sometimes.

*

Sometimes.

*

"You got your mother's same eyes," Booker murmured, staring.

*

She snapped his neck, crying, and it took her two attempts. She feared he would wake up, but he didn't, he didn't, he merely died. And she felt, for the first time in all this, empty.

A curious, hollow thing, like a sound with no echo.

Elizabeth pulled open his waistcoat, popping two of the buttons, and scrabbled with his shirt until she reached skin. She laid her ear next to his chest and felt nothing, no rise and fall, no heartbeat. No heartbeat at all, all throughout time. She thought about cracking open his ribcage to triple-check.

Instead, she opened a tear, and then immediately two more. She had forgotten her shoes by his bedside and stepped through barefoot. Like a wild thing, people on the strange streets reared away from her, avoided her gaze.

"Tell me about Booker DeWitt," she mumbled, to no-one in particular. "Can anyone tell me about Booker DeWitt?"

*

She held onto the fact that she knew his name; even if the universe had never heard it before. 

* 

She lost count of the tears she ripped apart.

*

_"That old drunk? You'll find him two blocks over, but who knows what sense you'll get out of him. He speaks in bottles and casino chips, lass, and little else."_

*

She watched him from a hired room in the apartment opposite, cooing his child and bouncing her in his arms. What if she let this one live? What if he were here, a safety net, so that there would always be an echo of Booker DeWitt's name in the universe?

*

Elizabeth DeWitt put her hand on Booker's door, over the cheap lettering, and breathed in the smell of whiskey and rye. She had money to hire the man, the same coins as had been in her pocket for a year or more.

She never paid him, of course.

Elizabeth DeWitt – who was also called Anna Comstock, and introduced herself thus – curled her lip when he didn't mention he had a daughter with the same name.

He made her decisions so simple, sometimes.

If her decisions could ever be called her own.

 


End file.
